European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - April 28, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse                                C layout by Peter Jaeger Harvard animal Behaviourist Bert Holldobler looked o ants by Daniel q. Haney associated press o " " r be pretty Spring Day 43 years ago Karl Holldobler and his 7-year-old son Berthold were hiking across a Field in Bavaria. They paused and the Man turned Over a Rock. Beneath it was a nest of shiny Carpenter ants. Young Bert was fascinated. The ants skittered about in silent pandemonium. But what intrigued the boy was the obvious order beneath the confusion the plump Queen covered by her Busy daughters the compartments stacked tidily with eggs larvae and pupae. Ubert wondered How does it work a. That Day in Germany during world War ii is Bert Holldobler  Strong memory of the subject that consumes him still. He has spent his life trying to answer his childhood question. The question led to Many others equally simple and profound. How do ants talk to each other How do they find their Way Home above All How could their tricks and talents Ever have evolved slowly meticulously he has teased the ants to give up their secrets. Holldobler is a scientist an animal Behaviourist at Harvard who has travelled ar6und the world to explore the hidden queendom of ants. What he has seen. Delights and amazes him. His ants Are resourceful i creatures. They have found a bewildering pastiche of solutions some elegant and logical others baroque and bizarre to the challenges of their world. Yet the Hunting expeditions the engineering feats the wars and All the rest serve just one purpose making More ants. And not just any ants but ants with a Large proportion of shared genes. Sterile ants that will never reproduce toil on for the Good of the Colony because it allows Sisters with nearly identical genes to live. Such selfless behaviour so much like human altruism is intended solely to pass on the family s genes. These discoveries have provided much of the foundation for a new science called sociobiology the study of How natural selection holds social behaviour just As it does physical shapes. Through the millenniums animals evolve Sharp claws keep eyes and Strong Muscles to help them survive and give their genes to the next generation. In the same Way such traits As cooperation and self sacrifice become printed into the creatures genetic code and they too ensure the immortality of genes. Some believe that this genetic self interest May even explain uniquely human traits like love and compassion they increase the Odds that a family s Library of genes will survive. However Holldobler is. More comfortable in the world of his ants. I literally grew up with ants he recalls. To As a boy he kept ants in his House. His prize was a Colony that he raised from a single Queen when he was 14, the ant was still alive when he left Home at 25. Holldobler went to College with the idea of studying Forest ecology not ants. But ants Are also important players in the Well being of Woods. They turn Over the soil and catch insects. In tropical rain forests ants and termites make up 30 percent of the biomass. In sheer living bulk they Are four times greater than All the animals with backbones. Some such As Wood chewing Carpenter ants Are destructive and learning to control them is important to Forest management. So for his doctoral thesis Holldobler fed radioactive Honey to Carpenter ants to see How quickly food or Poison could spread through a Colony. With a Geiger counter he followed radioactive ants through the Woods. He found that the ants did t live in just one tree As people always believed. In fact this Colony spread Over 13 Trees and in another Surprise had several Queens. Finally he studied their entire life Cycle and discovered that male ants give off doors that make Young Queens receptive to mating. By now Holldobler was hooked on ants. It occurred to me that you can Only understand the role of ants in their environment if you understand their social organization he said. The tremendous Success of ants is because they have evolved social systems. They can cooperate. They do things together whereas other insects have to work on their  there was so much to learn. Ants live almost everywhere in the world. There Are More than 12,000 species. Some March across the land in marauding arnies. Some capture enemy ants and Force them into slavery. Others farm aphids and eat their excrement. But All ants live in colonies. And in a typical Colony All the ants have the same Mother the Queen. The workers Are All sterile females. Males Are produced solely for the Job of fertilizing new Queens. When their ephemeral duties Are done the males die. Holldobler decided next to tackle one of the great puzzles of ant life their tolerance of parasites. Ants have developed elaborate defences to keep out intruders. Each wears a scent that serves As the family s uniform so it can distinguish Sisters from aliens. Yet Many kinds of bugs live with ants inside their Homes and even eat their Young. The ants graciously accept the visitors and feed them Groom them and rear their larvae. How do outsiders penetrate this exclusive society the discovery i made was that they have broken the communication code of the ants Holldobler said. Ants talk to each other by touching moving and giving off chemical signals. Beetles and other intruders Learned to mimic these cues. They Emit an like smells and beg food by drumming on the ants bodies with their antennae and touching the ants Mouths with their legs. With uncanny precision these Boorish callers ape the ants language and fool their hosts into accepting them As relatives. As happens so often in science one thing led to another. The discovery of the intruders antics Drew Holldobler deeper into the study of ant communication since ants often talk to each other by giving off scents called pheromones Holldobler and his students dissected ants to learn where these substances come from. They mapped the insects innards and found a Large assortment of glands that make the chemical signals. The ants use the signals to build their nests to tend their offspring to bring Home food and to conquer their enemies. Some species have worked out Complex symphonies of scents and signs to earn their living. This led Holldobler to the next question How did such intricate rituals Ever evolve when you look at the evolution of behaviour you Are in a dilemna because you Don t have behavioural fossils he said. The Only thing you can do is look at closely related species that May represent different evolutionary stages in this communication system. From these comparative analyses you can develop a Model for How Complex communication behaviour might have  Holldobler looked for different Levels of sophistication in one of the ants most important communication tasks summoning Sisters to carry Home food. When a scout finds a dead Grasshopper it May need thousands of helpers to lug the prize Back to the nest. We found a very diverse array of ways to communicate he said. The most simple is just picking up a nest mate and carrying her to the target area. The next simplest is going to a nest mate and inviting her to follow directly behind something called tandem running. More organized ants form columns of five or six workers. The Lead ant gives off a Short lived smell that holds the pack together. But the most sophisticated of All leave a Trail of scent on the ground. Hundreds or thousands of ants find the food by following the odorous path. By putting together this series of Steps Holldobler suggests that Over the ants More than 100 million years on Earth Trail laying evolved from tandem running. But this leads of course to another question. Why do living species have such diversity Holldobler asks. Why is one species tandem running while others have sophisticated Trail communications it turns out that Competition is in Large part the Mother of ant innovation. Ants evolve new schemes when they need them to win the race for food. For instance he found that very tiny ants which Page 14 / it of f f f fat f f the stars and stripes is